Adding complexity and uncertainty to a system that is already too complex almost ensures another failure. Legislators think incompetence in the private sector can be cured with incompetence in the public sector. In the private sector mistakes are recognized and eventually corrected. They are less likely to be repeated. In the public sector they are institutionalized. Political ideologues prefer demons to solutions.

The government will inevitably fail to redistribute wealth because they do not know what true wealth is. They can only view wealth in its most materialistic sense. By dismissing the emotional, moral, and intellectual components they confuse a home with mere bricks and mortar. I find this a fascinating irony that those who attack wealth the most have the most materialistic view of what wealth really is.

Populists prefer demons to solutions. Sometimes our problems are complicated and require some thought and analysis. But some just prefer to find a demon to blame. If they can’t find an ethnic or religious group to blame then just reach for the next best thing- the wealthy and the corporations.

We are a victim of our own success. With a thriving economy we think we can solve any problem and afford any program, and we start to betray the very principles, such as economic freedom, that we used to build a solid economy.

A sound theory in physics is not right only most of the time. When a scientist tests his theory against reality he adjusts the theory to reality. But political ideologues do not develop theories to describe reality as it exists but as they want it to exist. When reality does not respond the way their theory predicts (a theory’s value is its ability to predict), then they attempt to adjust the reality to fit their theory.

Adjusting reality requires a lot of force. This is how utopian masters of the universe develop into tyrants.

When nations define themselves by those they hate, they are left rudderless. Such movements of hatred are hard to control. If they succeed in destroying their quarry they are faced with the lack of any other unifying purpose. If they do not succeed they end up drained of any productive capacity of their own.

But the worst form of capitalism is crony capitalism, where business seeks value in government power rather than market service. This is similar to the mercantilism of previous times. Perhaps the only difference between crony capitalism and fascism is which party has the upper hand in the relationship between government and business. When you get in bed with the government somebody is gonna get screwed.

Crony capitalism is to capitalism what National Socialism (Nazism) is to socialism